path shifted to the west where naples is along the western coast of florida and people got out. of the 19,000 people in the city proper, they believe several thousand are left. that s better than most areas in terms of the percentage of evacuees. it s spongy. we ve been watching the bands of rain, significant but nothing like hurricane force. the water pools up very quickly. the streets flood very quickly which means it just doesn t have the tolerance for rain over time which is exactly what the hurricane will bring. so if you are here, you need to get out if you can and if you cannot get out, you need to seek shelter. simple message. other high points from the governor. 25 inches of rain expected in the keys. 10 to 15, maybe closer to 20. many different areas of florida. the whole state, head to toe. he expects serious impact.
this was the scene only moments ago in cuba. watch this, hurricane irma beginning to hit cuba. that s our correspondent patrick oppmann. been reporting in sunshine till a little while ago. then all of a sudden he was caught in the wind and rain. this shows you how quickly the bands of rain and wind can hit. patrick now is safe. he s under cover, but there he is. you saw what was going on. we re going to check back with patrick shortly. there is a new forecast that s just been released extending hurricanes warnings and watches north on both florida coasts. the storm now is expected to be a category 5 when it first makes land fall over the florida keys. let s go back to florida right now. the mayor of fort lauderdale jack seiler is joining us right now. mayor, thank you so much for joining us. you look at that, all of a sudden what happened to patrick oppmann, if there are folks in fort lauderdale, your beautiful city thinking about ride ing it out, maybe they see pictures like that. t
here. we know that houston obviously, houston proper and in and around houston, got quite the heads up. knew what was coming. what about beaumont, what about port arthur? did you guys have a sufficient heads up? well, we did. you can never really be totally prepared, because in a rain event like this, you never know where all the bands of rain are going to fall and into what watershed they re going to fall. so we couldn t say let s preposition in fact, we have 54 marines and 12 amphibious vehicles headed to beaumont pretty quickly. i ve been in touch with some of the people in the know. in fact, i talked to the white house, got off the phone with the white house, president trump s dhs adviser. so we ve got things headed that way. you couldn t have prepositioned them. because you never do know where all of the water is going to fall and get into what river, you know, what creek, what floodway, if you will. we call it a watershed. so it was impossible to say,
all day. as time went on, the water just kept rising, and more and more of these bands of rain would come through, and there was a sense of panic in our neighborhood. by the time people started waking up and realizing what was going on in the back of the neighborhood along this bayou, it was need to see the neighborhood come together and people started bringing rafts and kayaks and blow-up air ma mattresses to help get people out. one story that comes to mind, there was a 93-year-old woman, we went and knocked on her door and begged and pleaded for her to come out. she said no, i m staying here. she locked us out. wouldn t let us in her house. it took two hours of neighbors pleading for her to come out, that it wasn t safe. she lived right on the bayou. she had two feet of water in her house. two hours later we got her out. i also met another couple that i
about it. there is what they called the tax day flood, memorial day flood. just in the last year and a half. those were really devastating and just centralized in just different parts. so, now, this one, in the north. we have lake conrow. mandatory evacuations there. i m in the northwest part of it and basically stuck here in a parking lot because we could not get out either way. the major thoroughfares were shut off last night. we ll try to go out again a little bit later and see how far we can get to because they are, you know, there s flash flooding and it will recede and socome right back as the bands of rain continues to hit us. we have all of those hundreds of thousands of people that live there that have the voluntary evacuations and, of course, both airports we know are closed. that is on the south and north end and this is something that is completely inundating the entire community. phillip, can you walk us through the dam release, as well. the idea that one has been